August 6, 2026
On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting
Rights Act, In 1865, Americans ratified the Thirteenth Amendment
to the Constitution, outlawing enslavement except as punishment
for crimes, In subsequent years, with the ratification of the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, citizenship was guaranteed
to anyone born or naturalized in the US (except certain
Indigenous Americans) and the right to vote was extended to Black
men, These amendments gave Congress the power to enforce them, In
response, white opponents hindered the ability of Black men to
vote, Opposition did not gain traction until after WWII, when
judges used the due process clause and the equal protection
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to argue that states could not
deprive any American of equality, Under pressure from President
Dwight D Eisenhower, Congress passed civil rights acts in 1957
and 1960, and in 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of
1964 which strengthened voting rights, In 1965, the Voting Rights
Act became law, It was reauthorized repeatedly by large margins,
but in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the provision of the
law requiring that states with a history of discrimination get
approval before changing voting laws, The assault on the Voting
Rights Act continued in 2026, after the decision in Louisiana v
Callais, The gap between white and Black voter turnout in the
2024 election was the highest since at least 2008.
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